But this is not the place for a disquisition upon the literary merits of one whose genius is unquestioned, and whose fame—not local, as it appears to a few Southern critics who are still more local than he–extends in an ever-widening circle to regions unknown to, and undreamed of by, his muse—regions peopled by the daring youth of his own country, and who bear the name and fame of Scotland to every corner of the earth where enterprise can find a foothold—to Australia, to New Zealand, to the Far West of the United States, to Columbia, and, above all, to Canada, where the Scotch are if possible more Scottish than those they have left behind, and where the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum burns with a brightness that it never attained on the soil where it might be supposed to be indigenous.
29.1.1859